Alex Murdaugh Murder Convictions Overturned by State Supreme Court
Utah mom Kouri Richens wrote a book about grief after her husband Eric Richin's death in 2022.
And on May 13, which would have been Eric's 44th birthday, Kouri was sentenced to life in prison for his murder, 3rd District Court Judge Richard Mrazik calling the 36-year-old "too dangerous to ever be free."
Defense attorney Kathryn Nester said afterward that her client maintained her innocence and they would be appealing Kouri's conviction, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.
Kouri, who's been jailed in Summit County since her arrest in 2023, was found guilty in March of aggravated murder, attempted aggravated murder, two counts of insurance fraud and one count of forgery. She waived her right to testify at trial.
During the sentencing hearing, she called the allegations against her "an absolute lie," but directed most of her 30-minute statement to her three young sons, telling them that she and their father "made mistakes that I know I regret and I'm sure if he were here today he'd say there were things he regrets too."
She added later, "Be like your dad."
According to prosecutors, after an unsuccessful attempt at poisoning Eric with a sandwich on Valentine's Day, Kouri spiked a Moscow mule she prepared for him with a fatal dose of fentanyl, resulting in the 39-year-old's death on March 4, 2022.
A year later, Kouri published Are You With Me?, which was marketed as "a heartwarming and reassuring book that gently guides children through the difficult experience of losing a loved one," written by "a loving mother who personally faced this challenge."
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She subsequently appeared on local TV to talk about the tragedy and her motivation for putting pen to paper.
"It completely took us all by shock," Kouri told Good Things Utah hosts Deena Manzanares and Surae Chinn of Eric's death, "and my kids and I kind of wrote this book on the different emotions and grieving processes that we've experienced the last year."
A month later, it was Deena and Surae who were processing their feelings after Kouri was arrested for murder in May 2023.
"Nothing at all made me suspicious," Deena recalled to NewsNation of their April 2023 sit-down with Kouri. And yet, "I did think she was a little emotionless, maybe lacking a little bit of warmth. But everybody grieves differently, and I didn't want to judge. So I thought, maybe she's still numb."
But after the interview aired, the host shared, the station received an anonymous email that read, "You know she killed her husband." They admittedly "didn't think much of it at the time," she added. "We get a lot of crazy emails."
AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, Pool
Kouri told authorities that, on the night of March 3, 2022, she mixed her husband of nine years a Moscow mule to celebrate a work venture and he drank it in bed at around 11 p.m., according to the charging warrant obtained by E! News. After going to check on one of their sons who'd had a night terror, Kouri said, she ended up falling asleep in the boy's room.
She recalled returning to the couple's bedroom at around 3 a.m. and, per the warrant, finding Eric unresponsive and "cold to the touch."
Kouri said she left her phone charging in the couple's bedroom, but, according to the warrant, investigators found it had been locked and unlocked several times during the period she claimed to have been asleep, while multiple text messages had been sent and received and then deleted.
Toxicology tests following an autopsy revealed five times the lethal amount of the synthetic opioid fentanyl in Eric's system, with the Office of the Medical Examiner stating, per the warrant, that the deceased had orally ingested an illicit (as opposed to medical-grade) dose of the drug.
Eric's family alleged he had only stayed in the marriage for their children, who were 9, 8 and 5 when he died.
"I think Eric, being so involved in their lives as a soccer coach, baseball coach, basketball coach, wanted to keep the family together," family spokesman Greg Skordas told NBC News after Kouri's arrest. He called Eric a good father and philanthropist who "cared about a lot of people" and "did the best he could to make the most of his marriage."
According to documents reported on by KUTV, Kouri alleged Eric had an affair, writing in an April 19, 2022, email to investigators that, though she never moved out altogether, she took her clothes out of the house "make Eric understand I'm not kidding about leaving him if he doesn't end things" with the other woman.
They went to a few counseling sessions, she wrote, but "it wasn't for us" and they ultimately just "figured things out like most couples do."
Eric met with a divorce attorney and estate planner in October 2020, according to an amended charging document filed by prosecutors May 18, per NBC News. At the time, the filing states, he formed a living trust and made sister Katie Richins-Benson his trustee.
Relatives "advised he warned them that if anything happened to him, [Kouri] was to blame," investigators wrote in a Summit County Sheriff's Office search warrant affidavit obtained by NBC News. The affidavit also cited two family members who alleged Eric feared "Kouri would kill him for money and he wanted to make sure the kids were taken care of financially."
Between 2015 and 2017, Kouri took out four life insurance policies on Eric without his knowledge that were collectively worth more than $2 million, prosecutors alleged in their May 18 filing. The document states Eric found out in September 2020 that his wife had made several major financial transactions behind his back, including taking out a $250,000 home equity loan in 2019 that she promptly spent on a business property, withdrawing $100,000 from his bank accounts and charging more than $30,000 on his credit cards.
She agreed to repay him when he confronted her about the loan, prosecutors noted.
In a motion arguing for bail, Kouri's attorneys stated that Eric knew about the loan and did the work on the house in question himself. (Eric was co-owner of C&E Stone Masonry with business partner Cody Wright.)
Kouri started her own real estate firm in April 2019. Eric's family told investigators, per the search warrant affidavit, that they had been arguing over a property she wanted to buy for $2 million and flip. The day after Eric died, according to his family, Kouri signed the closing papers and held a gathering at her home.
In her April email, per KUTV, Kouri told investigators she and Eric had disagreements about her career, that he wanted her to "live the typical conservative life where the man takes care of his family and the wife is a homemaker, wife, mom and that's it."
She hoped to "move on," she wrote, "and grieve and mourn."
Family members told investigators that Eric believed his wife had already tried to poison him.
"According to a sister, Eric and his wife went to Greece a few years ago and after his wife gave him a drink he became violently ill and called his sister saying he believed his wife had tried to kill him," the search warrant affidavit read.
And on Valentine's Day in 2022, the affidavit alleges, "his wife brought him a sandwich, which after one bite Eric broke into hives and couldn't breathe. He used his son's EpiPen as well as Benadryl before passing out for several hours."
An acquaintance of Kouri's identified as "C.L." told detectives a week before she was arrested that she had asked sometime between December 2021 and February 2022 if C.L. could get her some painkillers for an investor with a back injury, according to the charging warrant reviewed by E! News.
About two weeks after dropping off hydrocodone at a house in Midway, Utah, that Kouri was flipping, C.L. said that Kouri asked specifically for fentanyl, saying the investor wanted something stronger.
C.L., who police noted in the warrant has a history of drug offenses, contacted a dealer in Ogden, Utah, on Feb. 11, 2022, and "procured 15-30 fentanyl pills from that dealer." Kouri picked the fentanyl up at C.L.'s house and paid $900 cash, C.L. told detectives, according to the warrant.
Three days later, Eric became "very ill" after eating Valentine's Day dinner and "told a friend that he thought his wife was trying to poison him," the charging warrant alleged. About two weeks later, according to C.L., Kouri asked for another $900 worth of fentanyl. C.L. said the pills were procured from the Ogden dealer on Feb. 26 and dropped off at the Midway property.
Authorities said Eric died of a fentanyl overdose on March 4.
AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, Pool
In a June 2023 court filing obtained by NBC News, Kouri's attorneys argued that "there has not been a single text message or other document turned over in discovery to support the allegation that Eric ever believed Kouri attempted to poison him."
Addressing various allegations made by prosecutors, the defense countered in the filing that Eric fell ill in Greece because a waitress served him an alcoholic beverage and he wasn't supposed to mix alcohol with medication he was taking for Lyme disease.
"According to the accounts of the mutual friends," the filing states, "Kouri immediately took Eric back to the room, called his doctor and found a pharmacy to purchase the medications and attended to Eric until he felt better. Several hours later Eric and Kouri rejoined their friends."
On Valentine's Day in 2022, the filing states, Eric didn't feel well after eating lunch that Kouri had bought—rather than prepared—for both of them and went to take a nap. Their nanny, the filing states, "witnessed that Eric had no hives and was not acting ill."
Six days later, "Eric and Kouri met different friends at a bar for drinks," the filing continues. "Witness accounts state they had never seen Eric and Kouri happier and that Eric made jokes about being allergic to allergy medication."
A year after she was charged, Kouri spoke out for the first time, telling NBC's Dateline: True Crime Daily podcast in a series of audio statements, "I've been silent for a year, locked away from my kids, my family, my life, living with the media telling the world who they think I am, what they think I've done or how they think I've lived."
An "innocent mom" had been taken away from her kids and, she added, "I'm anxious to prove my innocence. I'm anxious to get to trial."
After being denied bail, Kouri sued her late husband's estate, alleging she'd been kept from assets that were rightfully hers, namely the proceeds from the sale of Eric's half of his stonemasonry business and her half of the equity in the family home she says they purchased together for $400,000 in 2012.
Her lawsuit estimated that the house was worth at least $1.9 million thanks to improvements they made over the years— including the addition of a swimming pool they were planning to install and which was completed after Eric's death.
Included with the suit, per CourtTV, was a copy of their June 15, 2013, prenuptial agreement stating that Kouri had no claim on Eric's' business unless he predeceased her, in which case his ownership stake would go to her.
ABC4/Good Things Utah, YouTube
Eric's sister and trustee Katie Richins-Benson later filed a $13 million lawsuit against Kouri on behalf of the estate, alleging she stole money from Eric to keep her fledgling real estate venture afloat and then, after causing his death, wrote a children's book trading on his name and image.
Kouri was never going to pay back the $250,000 home equity loan and other funds she helped herself to without Eric's knowledge, the suit alleges, and she "overtly lied" about her intentions so he wouldn't take action against her.
The suit, posted by CourtTV, further maintains that Eric was the sole owner of the house and it belonged to the trust he established in 2020—as did all of his bank and retirement accounts, insurance policies, cash and "other estate property" valued at $300,000.
While the majority of the 18 causes of action detailed in the suit are for fraud, theft and other financial misdeeds, the complaint also alleges wrongful death for "causing Eric to orally ingest five times the lethal limit of illicit fentanyl."
AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, Pool
All of Kouri's actions detailed in the lawsuit, the estate alleged, were committed in "calculated, systematic fashion and for no reason other than to actualize a horrific endgame—to conceal her ruinous debt, misappropriate assets for the benefit of her personal businesses, orchestrate Eric's demise, and profit from his passing."
In a victim impact statement read during the June 12 detention hearing, Eric's sister Amy Richins said the last year had been a "living hell" for her family.
"How could anyone value human life so cheaply? I cannot comprehend it," Amy said in court. "I'm overflowing with grief and pain at the thought that Eric meant so little to her."
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Before Kouri was given the maximum sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole, Katie told the judge, “Please do not let my brother’s life be worth nothing more than a 25-year punishment.”
Amy said that "a parole-eligible sentence is not a conclusion," but rather "an ongoing nightmare.”
Kouri and Eric's sons, who are now being raised by their aunt Katie and her husband, expressed hope that their mother—referring to her by her first name in statements made to prosecutors—would remain in prison.
As detailed in a May 11 court filing, the youngest of the kids said he had "limited" memories of both his parents, and once Kouri "is gone I will feel happy and I will feel safer and relaxed and trust people more.”
(Originally published July 1, 2023, at 5 a.m. PT)
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